Gimme Some Sugar

Blog Roll

Tuesday, August 06, 2013

National Journal:
When the House Judiciary Committee passed a late-term abortion ban in
June, Republican leaders scrambled to find a female, media-savvy
lawmaker to bring the legislation to the floor. Their biggest problem:
Not a single Republican woman was represented among the committee’s 23
Republican members. They eventually settled on Rep. Marsha Blackburn of
Tennessee, who isn’t on the Judiciary Committee.

The episode underscored a growing problem that is worrying
Republicans: Women are badly underrepresented within their party in the
Congress. Only 8 percent of House Republicans are women, and there are
only four female Republican senators. Of the long list of potential 2016
GOP presidential contenders, there’s not a single woman.

Party leaders want to close the gender gap, but worry that it will be
difficult with very few female leaders in Congress to handle outreach.

"It’s not good enough. It’s not. And it’s not reflective of the
electorate," said Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., one of just three Republican
women in the freshman class of 2012, who were sworn into the House
alongside 17 female Democratic colleagues. “We have a message I think
that reaches women and we need to make sure that we’re actively and
aggressively telling that story. And there’s no better way to do it than
being a woman who talks about it."

Wagner argues that women bring an important perspective on some of
the biggest issues the country is currently dealing with, such as family
budgets, health care, entitlements, and energy policy—all things women
tend to handle in their households. “We’re the ones filling the minivan
up," she said.

The first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one. For
the Republican Party, the first step also seems to be the final one. The
GOP faces the same problem here as they do with the rest of their
rebranding efforts — they aren’t at all interested in listening. An
authoritarian party to the core, they seem to believe they don’t have to
listen to women’s concerns. Instead, they try to dictate to women what
concerns women have.

Another rookie mistake, [Republican pollster Kellyanne] Conway said,
is focusing too much on “women’s issues," if such a thing exists.
Democratic women, she said, put too much of an emphasis on abortion,
while Republican women have the opportunity to take a broader view.
“There are very few Democratic women who can begin or finish a sentence
without mentioning a ‘woman’s right to choose,’ " Conway said, noting
that she’s actually had her researchers go through hours of remarks by
Democratic members to find a single woman who failed to mention
abortion. They haven’t found one yet. “There is a tremendous opening for
the ‘whole women,’ if you will, to step up and run for office as a
Republican…. What do you do every week gals, do you fill up the gas tank
or do you have an abortion?" she said.

Yeah, I seriously doubt that she couldn’t find any Democratic woman
who’s ever talked about anything other than abortion. And taking a
“there’s no such thing as women’s issues" line doesn’t strike me as the
best way to win women voters. But my biggest takeaway here is that she’s
basically telling women, “You don’t care about abortion." Which, if
your party is currently engaged in trying to eliminate abortion, you
really have to hope is true.

As it is with minority outreach, the Republican message to the target
voters here is “We don’t have to change, you do." I doubt women will
find that especially compelling. As Taylor Marsh points out
in a post about this outreach project, this is all about Hillary 2016.
She writes that Republicans “don’t have one single viable female
contender to take on Hillary Rodham Clinton, with the congressional
bench slim compared to the Democratic women waiting in the wings:
Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand." And about that
“whole woman" idea that looks beyond the right to choose:

[T]he Republican war against entitlements, specifically Social
Security, hurts females more than any other group. There isn’t a bigger
champion for women’s economic rights than Hillary, with the Republican
version having only a platform of “reforming” entitlements so that older
women have a financial burden they can’t meet as they age.

If Republicans want to win with women, they’re going to have to
change. Swinging a watch in front of female voters and saying, “You are
getting sleepy and you don’t care about no ‘bortions," just isn’t going
to cut it.